Gustav Klimt Quotes

I have been sent more ridiculous press notices. People are frequently comparing my work with Van Gogh... I do hope I do not get bloated and self-satisfied. When proud feelings come I step up over them to the realm of work, to the thing I want, the liveness of the thing itself.

Every good painter paints what he is.

You are the accumulations of your experiences at any given point. And when you express something those things come out. The thing is I hate seeing my films when I'm done with them, so I don't look back as a chart of my life, but I leave it as a kind of chart. Though, it is a photograph, captured.

I wonder if the artist ever lives his life--he is so busy recreating it.

The individual - man as a man, man as a brain, if you like - interests me more than what he makes because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.

My works are an imitation of my own past and present.

I don't wake up in the morning and think about Franz Kline.

Anybody who dedicates himself to exploring the human condition, there's always a detached eye that's watching. In any situation, a little part of me is observing it, to see if there are any raw materials to create something else later.

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

I never regarded my pictures as very much to be proud of, except in this, the craft, the style.

I've been fifty thousand times to the Louvre. I have copied everything in drawing, trying to understand.

If I have a style, I am not aware of it.

I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens.

To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.

Giorgio Morandi's paintings make me think that artists may not totally choose, or even control, their subjects or style.

As a painter, it seemed easier to sort of disappear.

Writing music on your own makes you think a lot about your life. Who are you? Would you change anything about yourself? This is where it comes from.

I would rather my films be well-known than I be well-known.

My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.

Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me.

In front of the camera I look and I see visually what I've created.

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

I never analyzed whether I had a style or whether I didn't. I wouldn't be able to describe my style or even tell if I have one or not.

In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects.

I am only an artist.